משיח.! סאיז נאך דא אידען וואס בענקען דיך
הונדערטער טויזענטער אידען וואוינען היינט אין פראנקרייך, בעיקר קאנצעטרירט אין די סובארב שטעט ארום פאריז. מייסטענס פון זיי זענען פון ספרדישע אפשטאם וואס זייערע עלטערן זענען אהין אנטלאפן פון די אראבישע לענדער צו לעבן אידישלך פריי פון פאגראמען און רדיפות.
איצט ווען די צרות פלאקערן פון דאס ניי אויף דארטן, האבן זיי שוין נישט קיין כח ווי צו לויפן. נאר זיצן מיואש מיט איינגעלייגטע הענט און ווארטען אויף משיח.
'Monsieur, this is not the true France'
By Daniel Ben Simon
SEINE-SAINT-DENIS, France - Here, in this vast immigrants' quarter north of Paris there are neighborhoods that have gained notoriety throughout the country as festering swamps of crime and violence. Anyone who has no compelling reason to visit here keeps his distance, for fear of his life.
In the past three decades these neighborhoods have undergone a demographic and architectural upheaval, which has wrought a radical change in them. Natives of France have left and have been replaced by hundreds of thousands of Jewish and Muslim immigrants from the Maghreb. To absorb this massive influx, thousands of long, dreary, monotone apartment buildings have been constructed alongside one another, creating a stifling density.
Jews and Muslims found themselves living together as neighbors and perpetuating a way of life similar to what they knew in their countries of origin. In the past few years their numbers have been augmented by migrants from countries of sub-Saharan Africa, as well as from China, India, Pakistan, Turkey, Poland, Romania and elsewhere. These colorful migrations have given rise to a broad and distinctive mosaic in the distant suburbs.
Recent years have also seen the crumbling of the harmony that existed among the newcomers, and especially between Muslims and Jews from North Africa, against the background of the Israeli-Palestinian confrontation. The everyday routine of the Jewish residents has been violated time and again by attempts on the part of their Muslim neighbors to do them harm.
"Monsieur, this is not the true France," declared David Edri, the proprietor of a pastry shop in Sarcelles, one of the suburbs in the Seine-Saint-Denis area. "Do you understand?" he persisted. "There are people here from all countries, but there are no French people. They have all fled and left us alone with the Arabs."
It's not by chance that Edri singled out the Arabs. In the past three years they have changed, in his perception, from cordial neighbors and good customers to people he is completely fed up with. Recently he has begun to contemplate the idea of leaving. In the early 1960s he left Marrakech, Morocco, to settle in France. He was certain he had found what he was looking for. But then the Palestinian intifada erupted and the local Arabs vented their wrath on their Jewish neighbors. They spat on Jewish passersby in the street, scrawled graffiti on the walls of their shared apartment buildings, harassed children wearing skullcaps, calling them "sales Juifs" - "dirty Jews" - and even tried to burn down the neighborhood synagogue. For Edri, that was already too much.
Exactly two weeks ago, following the conclusion of the Sabbath eve prayers, the rabbi in the synagogue asked the worshippers not to leave just yet. After bolting the doors, those present discussed ways to restore security to the Jews of Sarcelles. Some people said in a panic that it was impossible to go on living like this, in constant fear. Others suggested moving to a different neighborhood, "where there are no Arabs." Others argued that there is no choice but to immigrate to "the Land of Israel, because that is the safest place for Jews." Everyone agreed that they would abide by whatever the rabbi would decide.
"Yes, yes, we do what the rabbi tells us," Edri said two days later, nodding his head and keeping a close eye on the oven behind the counter in his shop. Pleasant odors wafted through the pastry shop as Edri instructed his apprentice baker "to give the croissants no more than another five minutes."
It was difficult to get away from the Israeli atmosphere that pervaded the shop. Next to the cash register was a small box for charity on which was a photograph of volunteers from Zaka (Identification of Disaster Victims) tending to victims of a terrorist attack in Israel. The radio on the shelf above played songs by Yehoram Gaon and Eyal Golan, two well-known Israeli singers. On one of the walls was a colorful poster urging Jews to immigrate to the Promised Land and settle in the Katif Bloc of settlements in the Gaza Strip. Next to it was another poster offering a Hannukah holiday in Netanya at bargain rates. As a bonus, the tour operators promised a night visit to the "Western Wall tunnel."
"Here in Sarcelles the rabbi is the person who decides everything and we consult with him about every question," Edri added. "On the day he tells us that he is moving to Israel, half the neighborhood will go with him. There will be a few who will move to Canada, but the majority will go to Israel. Something has happened to the Jews in France. People don't feel it is their home.
"Every day I see movers taking the goods of people who are immigrating to some other country. Because today in France to attack Jews is fashionable. I feel very bad that the Jews have again become a target of attacks, and I see no future here. We were never liked here, but now our schools and shops and even the synagogues are under attack. The Jews in Sarcelles are walking a thin line and so we are thinking about leaving."
Israel is undoubtedly the primary destination of those who leave and of those who are contemplating emigration. "Israel's prestige is rising in our view," admits Shlomo Guez, who is responsible for maintenance in the "Sha'arei Rahamim" (Gates of Mercy) synagogue in the Garges les Gonesse neighborhood, a migrant suburb not far from Sarcelles. "That's because the moment your country is in danger, the more you love it. We have become close to Israel, because we feel that we are under threat because we are Jews."
About a year ago, youngsters of North African origin attacked the synagogue, running amok outside the gate and throwing stones at the worshippers. Immediately afterward a firebomb was thrown at the synagogue. No one was hurt. Following that incident, the interior minister, Nicolas Sarkozy, ordered guards to be posted outside the synagogue. An iron wall was built around the entire structure, and closed-circuit security cameras monitor the movement of passersby day and night.
Some 600 Jewish families still live in this neighborhood, alongside thousands of Muslim families. The wave of return to religion by the Muslims in the past few years is obvious everywhere. There is hardly a woman or young girl without a head covering, and the immigrant shop owners have added an Arabic name to the French one. The living conditions are harsh and the unemployment rate among the migrants is 2.5 times the national level. The distress has heightened religious belief, and in the titanic struggle for the soul of the newcomers, the stream of those turning to religion has apparently overcome the stream of those leaving the faith. At least for now.
Origins of anti-Semitism
The incidents against the residents of the neighborhood have tapered off lately, but have been replaced by fears about the future that awaits them in France. The anti-Jewish attacks have left scars and trauma. On Shabbat a month and a half ago the anxiety level rose again. The Jews of Paris awoke to shocking images broadcast on television of the remains of the Jewish school in the Gagny neighborhood, a migrant quarter that lies not far from Garges les Gonesse in the Seine-Saint-Denis region. The building was razed to the ground.
Interior Minister Sarkozy, who visited the scene immediately, asserted that the arson attack bore a "clear racist and anti-Semitic context." Two days later, President Jacques Chirac convened Jewish leaders at the Elysee Palace and told them that "every attack on Jews is the same as an attack on France."
What worries the Jews is the normalization of the anti-Jewish acts. A decade ago, hundreds of thousands of people - Jews, Arabs and Christians - would take to the streets in the wake of an anti- Semitic incident. In 1990, the desecration of Jewish graves at Carpentras in southern France jolted the entire country and led to one of the most impressive marches ever seen. Some 300,000 people joined the protest procession, led by the president, Francois Mitterrand. Today the Jews feel that the envelope of solidarity and protection no longer exists.
In the first year of the intifada, the municipality lost no time in sending workers to erase anti-Jewish slogans that were scrawled on walls across the country. These days the pace has slowed down - perhaps because of the banality of the graffiti or perhaps because the French have grown weary of the outcries of the victimized Jews.
"When you hear 'sale Juif' in your own country, you do not forget it quickly," noted Philippe Elyakim, a senior editor on a highly regarded economic journal published in France. He always considered himself a Frenchman in every respect; he had not experienced an anti- Semitic event since his parents emigrated from Salonika in the 1940s. Three weeks ago his 13-year-old son returned from school visibly upset. During recess, he related, one of his classmates had called him a "dirty Jew."
Shocked, Elyakim reported the incident to the principal of the school in the prestigious Monmartre quarter, who quickly suspended the offending girl, who is from a good family, for three days. "There is something insane about the ease with which people in France call you 'dirty Jew,' as though they wanted to say 'idiot' or something," Elyakim added. "There was a time when a jibe like that would have generated articles in the papers and the school would have been denounced. Today you hear anti-Semitic remarks and you feel like raising heaven and earth and telling the French: What has happened to you? Look at what is going on in our - I almost said your - home."
What are France's Jews undergoing today? The answer is not unequivocal. The majority of the Jews will maintain fervently that their lives are again in danger and that anti-Semitism has reared its ugly head once more after a respite of several decades. Others will explain that this is Muslim racism generated by the bloody conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. One way or the other, there is no ignoring the fact that in the past three years, which were studded with anti-Semitic attacks and incidents, not one Jew has been hospitalized, not one Jew has been injured or has required medical treatment of any kind against this background.
The one serious incident was the puzzling stabbing attack on Rabbi Gabriel Farhi by an unknown assailant about a year ago. The case has yet to be solved, and the investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Farhi "organized" the stabbing himself in order to sate his relentless desire for publicity.
Thoughts of leaving
"It is impossible to say that there is no anti-Semitism in France today," said Jean-Jacques Wahl, fidgeting uneasily in his chair, as though forcing himself to come out with this explicit statement. Wahl is the director-general of the Alliance network of schools, which has about 25,000 students worldwide, half of them in Israel. "Take me, for example," he went on. "You will not find anyone who is more French than I am, because my roots lie many generations deep in this land. I am even more French than Jean-Marie Le Pen. I have always considered France a natural country for Jews, but now I have to admit that things have changed."
He always took pride in his Jewishness and in his ancient Jewish roots in the Alsace region. He always felt desired by the French elite and an integral part of it. "I never believed I would encounter anti-Semitism," he said, raising his voice, "and certainly not in my children's generation. I am now 55, and unfortunately I have discovered all kinds of indications attesting to a return of anti-Semitism. But contrary to the past, the French government is not anti-Semitic and President Chirac is not anti-Semitic. I am certain of that."
Together with his concern, Wahl insists on toning down the militant views being voiced by Jews in France and by hysterical Israeli officials to the effect that France has fallen victim to the anti-Semitic virus. It bears recalling that there are few countries in the free world in which Jews are natural candidates to run their country. Three of the five candidates of the Socialist Party who are leading in the presidential polls are of Jewish origin. The leading candidate of the right wing to replace Chirac, Nicola Sarkozy, has never hidden the Jewish part of his family on his father's side. No one in the media or in the political establishment or in any other framework has voiced so much as a single comment on the subject.
This equality of opportunity is not enough to assuage the fears of French Jews, especially those who live in the suburbs. This may also be why a symposium devoted to the psychoanalysis of anti-Semitism that took place two weeks ago drew a crowd of hundreds, who tried to squeeze into a hall that was too small for the audience. According to Wahl, if the conference had been held four years ago it would probably not have drawn an audience of even 40 people.
Fear about the future is the reason that many French Jews are openly discussing the possibility of leaving their country. In the past two years, some 2,500 French Jews have immigrated to Israel, double the rate of the years preceding the incidents. There is hardly a Jewish paper that doesn't set aside a large amount of space for this subject. And there is hardly a Jewish radio station that isn't inundated with questions from worried listeners about their future in France. "Do the Jews have a future in France?" the writer Annie Goldman asked, and replied that on the day the state fails to do its duty to protect its citizens, the time will have come to leave. "But, thank God, we are not there yet," she stated.
Hidden Jewish identity
Nevertheless, the students of the Jewish high school that is located in one of the Seine-Saint-Denis suburbs feel that they are already there. This school, too, has recently acquired the look of a prison due to the ugly wall that has been built around it and the cameras that seek out hostile interlopers. It is not by chance that the school is guarded as though it were a military site. The largest concentration of militant Muslims in France lives around the school. This is a poor area in which hard-pressed migrants from the lower classes live, many of them dependent on the state's welfare allowances.
Every morning the 650 Jewish students are transported to the school. Muslim students make their way to their schools alongside them. The trips are fraught with tension and are arenas of friction between the two groups. Until the start of the intifada, the Jewish students used to flaunt their Jewishness, wearing a Star of David around their neck and the boys wearing yarmulkes. Now they keep the yarmulkes in their pockets and put them on only after they are on the school grounds, removing them again on their way home in the afternoon.
"Outside it's not a good idea to wear a yarmulke," explained Rachel Cohen, the school principal. "These days it's enough to look like a Jew to be attacked. So we have given the students permission to hide any sign that is liable to expose their Jewishness." That doesn't always help. The Muslims, she says, know who the Jews are and are quick to harass them. "There isn't a student in the school who has been spared an anti-Semitic incident," she said. "When they go home, they encounter curses and imprecations for being Jewish."
Last month Cohen sent a letter to the regional inspector on behalf of the Education Ministry, reporting the curses that are hurled at her students on the way to school and back. Some examples: "Look at these Jews, they have no place here with us," "Let them go back to their country," "I would blow her up together with me," "I'm ready to sacrifice myself to kill one of them," and the inevitable "sale Juif."
The tenth grade students feel like settlers in an occupied country. The past two years have changed their concept of France and their attitude toward Israel. There is hardly a student in the class who hasn't been involved in an anti-Semitic incident. Asked which of them see their future in France, only five of nearly 40 students responded affirmatively. In response to the question of which of them sees his future in Israel, nearly everyone raised his hand.
They have never felt so close to Israel, so proud of the country. The plight of their Jewish identity in their country has heightened their affinity for Israel. Asked about their identity, they all replied that they see themselves first as Jews and only afterward as French. One of the girls related that she had always aspired to be French like all the citizens of France. "But because of the anti-Semitism I feel I will always remain a Jew in the eyes of the others," she said hesitantly, "so I want them to know that I am proud to be a Jew and proud of Israel."
To reduce fears, Cohen set up organized transportation for the students so they wouldn't have to encounter Muslim students. "I feel sorry for the Muslim kids," she said. "I am grieved by the hatred they have implanted in them and by the anti-Jewish brainwashing they are subjected to. What kind of life will they have when they grow up? My feeling is that the clerics who have poisoned these young people are criminals, because they destroyed the common fabric of life of Jews and Muslims."
It wasn't always like this. The previous decade is considered the golden age in the history of French Jewry. Jewish life prospered and flourished in the 1990s. New synagogues, schools, kindergartens and kosher restaurants were opened. The intellectual atmosphere blossomed and Jewish writers achieved glory at home and abroad. In 1991, the French marked the bicentennial of the emancipation of French Jewry, just two years after the grand celebrations to mark the bicentennial of the French Revolution. The two historic events helped integrate the Jews into the French society.
In 1995 President Chirac recognized France's responsibility for the Holocaust of the country's Jews, and two years later the French church asked for forgiveness from the Jews for having been silent during the war period. A poll conducted that year found that 90 percent of France's citizens considered the Jews to be French in every respect. "Today that has changed, says Haim Musicant, director-general of CRIF, the umbrella organization of French Jewry. "We have entered an age of uncertainty. At the same time, France is not an anti-Semitic country: there is no anti-Semitic policy and President Chirac is not anti-Semitic. France is going through a crisis, and it is our obligation to lend a hand and help the country emerge from the crisis."
Real or imagined anti-Semitism?
The anti-Jewish incidents led the philosopher Alain Finkielkraut to the verge of hysteria. For the past two years he has been relentlessly spreading fear and anxiety about the surging anti-Semitism throughout the country. There is hardly a radio or television program on the subject in which he doesn't warn the Jews about the future that lies in store for them in France. A few weeks ago, his book "In the Name of the Other: Reflections on the Coming Anti-Semitism" reached the book stores. He wrote with a heavy heart, he says.
The Jews, he says, are now afraid of a new outbreak of anti-Semitism for the first time since 1945. There is classic Jew-hatred in the style of the extreme right and left-wing Jew-hatred fomented by the pursuers of freedom who are fighting oppression and view Israel as the root of all evil in the world. Finkielkraut sees the hatred emanating from religion-poisoned Muslims and he discerns it among non-Muslims as well, who have again taken up the belief that the Jews are to blame for all the world's troubles.
The well-known philosopher Bernard-Henri Levy has also recently taken on himself the task of defending the Jews against anti-Semitism. In his book "Who Killed Daniel Pearl?" he comes to the conclusion that the Wall Street Journal reporter was murdered by Pakistani fundamentalists just because he was a Jew. The Jewish point is not new in Levy's work. In his book "The French Ideology," published 25 years ago, he wrote about the anti-Semitic currents that were moving within the streams of French thought.
The late Raymond Aron, one of the great thinkers of the last century, took issue with Levy and others like him, who see anti-Semitism wherever they look, whether it really exists or not. "Here are some more French Jews who again feel threatened by anti-Semitism," he wrote mockingly in the weekly L'Express about Levy's book. "Like human creatures who have been struck by lightning, these people only heighten the imaginary danger. What is Bernard-Henri Levy actually saying to the Jews? That danger lurks for them everywhere and the French ideology decrees that they will have to wage an endless struggle because of an enemy that has taken residence in the subconscious of millions of French people. Non-Jewish French people are liable to reach the conclusion that the Jews are even more different than they imagined, due to a writer who turns out to be incapable of understanding the complexity of French thought ... Levy is rubbing salt on wounds of the past that have yet to heal. With his hysteria he is nourishing hysteria in segments of the Jewish community, which have already fated themselves to live in a world of fantasies."
Walk on the safe side
For years, male French Jews appeared in public places wearing a yarmulke or with a Star of David around their neck. They were not bothered by the fact that this ran contrary to the secular character of the state. This is now about to change. The new law that is intended to anchor the status of secularism will forbid them to make use of exterior signs of their religious faith. Henceforth they will have to behave like Jews at home and like Frenchmen outside.
The law took the Jews by surprise. In fact, it is aimed at the Muslims, and especially against the head coverings worn by Muslim girls in school and in public places. However, once the public commission that was appointed to find ways of strengthening the secular character of the republic made its decision to place restrictions on Muslims, it placed the same limitations on Jews and Christians.
Some Jews are already readying themselves for the new reality. Some time ago, Joseph Sitruk, the chief rabbi of France, called on Jews to wear a cap instead of a yarmulke. The rabbi wants to spare Jews from attack because of their exterior identification. Many Jews have done as he asked and bought caps. Just to be on the safe side.
French Jewish high school students on a solidarity visit to Israel this week.
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